Friday,
August 22nd, 1823 - After waiting on E Collins, Esq., a friend of Dr
Hosack, who is a botanist of distinction in that quarter, who recommended me to
go to see the place of the venerable John Bartram, and Mr Lisle of Woodlands, Henry Pratt Esq and the principal nurseries. I
called on Mr Will Dick, janitor of the university, who also used me kindly. The garden he has
established partly on his own account. I am also in hopes that I shall
obtain some seeds in the fall.
I made
a journey to Mr McMahon, which is three miles north of the city. I did not find
him at home; I looked round the garden and after a patient search found
Maclura, two plants, height about seventeen feet, bushy and rugged. Then I
called at Bartram’s old place but found no person at home.
NB – I think this reference to E Collins is a transcription
error. It is much more likely to be Zaccheus Collins, of whom we learn,
from the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadeplphia:
Zaccheus Collins (1764-1831) was a plant collector and herbarium owner from
Philadelphia. Collins was an esteemed botanist and was often consulted by a
majority of botanical writers, though he never published anything himself. He
was also an avid collector and his herbarium contained a nearly complete
collection of the plants from the vicinity of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. His
correspondents also sent him various specimens from their research in the
southern states, particularly South Carolina and Georgia.
Collins, born in 1764, was a Quaker merchant and an active
philanthropist. He was particularly interested in botany, and especially
cryptogamic plants (organisms that do not produce seeds and include algae,
fungi, mosses, and ferns). Throughout his career, he “accumulated a large
herbarium primarily through his own collecting in New Jersey and eastern
Pennsylvania, by exchange and as gifts from other leading botanists of the
day,” (Stuckey).
Through his extensive network of prominent botanists, gifts of specimens
arrived from South Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Missouri, the Mississippi River
and westward.
He was highly esteemed by his contemporaries, and, according to, “the
letters of the most eminent botanists of that time show how highly they valued
his knowledge and how eagerly they sought his advice upon all doubtful
questions in their science,” (Redfield). Thomas Nuttall honored him by
naming Collinsia for him and is described “to have been a sort of lifetime
achievement award,”
Here we see Douglas making contacts with the well-established
Philadelphia network of botanists and nurserymen. John Bartram, the
King’s Botanist, is a well-known figure in the history of botany in the USA and
I’ll return to him in more detail when Douglas revisits Bartram’s garden in
November 1823.
Bernard McMahon, the pre-eminent
nurseryman and seedsman in Philadelphia, had emigrated from Ireland in 1796 and
had published one of the earliest American works on horticulture – The American
Gardener’s Calendar - in 1806. However, McMahon had died in 1816 so it’s unsurprising
Douglas found him “not at home”, although it is perhaps surprising that news of
his death hadn’t reached London, and therefore Douglas.
The genus name Mahonia (incuding the Oregon Grape Duglas would
later encounter in the Pacific North West honors
McMahon, who introduced the plant from materials collected by the Lewis and Clark expedition. Wikipedia
Built by Andrew Hamilton, Woodlands was a Federal-style
mansion on his 250-acre estate. During the Hamilton family’s glory days, the
estate was a centre for elegance and gracious entertaining. By the 1840s, the
property fell into disrepair and the grounds were turned into a cemetery, which
remains to this day. Renowned for his work in horticulture, landscape design
and botany, William Hamilton, Andrew’s grandson, was asked by Thomas
Jefferson to plant some seeds harvested during Lewis and Clark’s expeditions.
Eventually, the estate boasted more than 10,000 species of plants. Today, more
than 720 historic trees and plants have survived and are scattered throughout
the property.
